Open Platform Management Architecture: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:05, 7 January 2006

Revision as of 01:18, 7 January 2006

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==History==

OPMA was created as a joint technology development effort between [[AMD]] and various platform management subsystem technology companies such as [[Agilent]], [http://www.ami.com AMI], [http://www.avocent.com Avocent], and [http://www.peppercon.com Raritan-Peppercon]. When OPMA was [http://www.amd.com/us-en/Weblets/0,,7832_8366_7595~95073,00.html first released] in February of 2005, platform hardware management was being treated as a value added feature by OEMs. This resulted in a constant redesign of the management card infrastructure such that no two motherboard manufacturers could use the same card. Lack of standards and constant redesign kept hardware engineers busy but resulted in higher end user costs. While PCI based management cards were available which could be plugged into a variety of platforms, the PCI bus did not provide direct access to all of the sensors needed to manage the hardware aspects of a platform. To gain full sensor access, custom headers had to be added to motherboards. Custom cables were then linked these sideband signals between the card and the motherboard. In addition, PCI slots wereare a premium resource for many servers, especially those using the 1U rack format and those which needed to use PCI slots for I/O used tothat enhanceenhances system performance.

Coincident with the above, AMD was seeing a dramatic increase in interest for its [[Opteron]] series of server processors. As a result, AMD engineering teams were internally tasked with building server reference designs to support Opteron evaluation by customers. During these early internal server design efforts it was determined that a standard management card subsystem that was reusable across many platforms would decrease time to market while saving design and support costs for AMD reference design platforms in the field. Such an interface would also allow AMD to outsource the design and test of the management card to industry experts. AMD reasoned that external audiences would derive these same benefits as its internal engineering teams and so OPMA was documented and released. Since the initial release of the OPMA specification there has been [http://www.amd.com/us-en/Weblets/0,,7832_8366_7595~102307,00.html significant uptake]by the server industry platform and infrastructure providers.

==External Links==